Browse Resources (24 total)

Survey description of Oak Hill, dated February 13, 1970, for the Historic American Buildings Survey Inventory.

Rosemarie Schelling and her family moved to the Braddock District when her husband was stationed at the Pentagon during the 1960s. Their five children joined a neighborhood of large families. Rosemarie Schelling remembers family activities, outdoor…

Oak Hill mansion, built in 1790, is the only remaining home of the three manor houses of the Fitzhugh dynasty built on the Ravensworth plantation. Richard Fitzhugh, great grandson of the original Ravensworth owner, built Oak Hill in the late Georgian…

This map of local land ownership in the eighteenth century in the Braddock District area shows the original buyer's name for each land patent or grant. Ravensworth was the single largest land grant in Northern Virginia. William Fitzhugh, son of an…

Dennis Howard traces part of the history of African Americans in Fairfax County from the nineteenth century. He recreates the story of his own family from slavery to the present day. His ancestor, Horace Gibson, and fellow former slave Moses Parker…

Bill Wrench came to the Braddock District in 1957 as the Director of the Economic and Industrial Development Committee (later, the Economic Development Authority). Lack of development in the county surprised him then, but his job was to integrate…

Donna Soderholm moved to the Braddock District of Fairfax County in 1963. Compared to Chicago, the Virginia suburbs were undeveloped and her husband's commute to downtown DC took only a half hour. Most families in her neighborhood had four or more…

In Part 1 of two interview sessions, Bill and Elsie (Sheads) Sisson, brother and sister, reminisce about their family, which came to the Braddock District from Culpepper, Virginia, in 1903. They talk about people and places, schools, lumbering and…

Ruth Miller moved to the Braddock District from Flint, Michigan in 1961. A single mother of three, she taught elementary school. Ruth Miller discusses artifacts of earlier years and the changing geography of the community.

Bill Hellwig's family moved to Fairfax County in 1952. His father, a civil engineer, conducted studies for developers on the feasibility of land tracts for development, including the preliminary engineering work for most of Springfield. Bill…